The European Union’s cap-and-trade system has long been considered the gold standard for market-based emissions-reduction policies, and it’s influenced similar efforts from California to South Korea. Since 2005, it’s helped reduce the EU’s industrial carbon emissions by about 50 percent, and a recent working paper called it the “most impactful climate policy in the world.” But a set of changes proposed earlier this month by the European Commission, the bloc’s legislative body, has called its credentials into question.
Wijnand Stoefs, EU policy lead for the European nonprofit Carbon Market Watch, likened the day of the proposals to Black Friday — and he wasn’t talking about the annual shopping event. Instead, he reached for another metaphor. “Smoke appeared from the 13th floor of the Berlaymont,” he wrote on LinkedIn, referring to the Brussels headquarters of the European Commission. “And it was acrid, tarry, black smoke.”
Stoefs’ account is unusually evocative, but he shares concerns with other po... Read more
